For nine_ofswords

[the_hermit]

Summary: In which Merritt fails his will save Merritt makes a stupid decision... In which this thread ends badly.

--

Merritt goes still, something about him calming, and the smile that crosses his face is humorless. "That little 'stunt' was easy," he begins seriously, his tone becoming carefully measured.

"The Horsemen are my family, and leaving that man a drooling idiot was the very least I would do to protect them."

He's not close enough to actually, physically reach Ben, but he doesn't need to be. He swings, mentally, lashing out with a burst of magic designed to cripple.

Comments

[the_hermit]

Merritt shakes his head again, increasingly aware of there being more presences in the room than just Dylan, of the oddness with his shadow. He blinks at Dylan's hands in front of him - and then goes still as Dylan reaches out to him. He doesn't resist, doesn't close his eyes, though he does frown.

"He was you, Dylan," he breathes, and his use of the wrong name probably speaks volumes to how nearly broken he is by all this. "I know you, and..." he tries to go on but ends up just cutting himself off, and his eyes do slip closed, now, against the possibility of hope.

[onebehind]

"Yeah, that's the problem," Dylan tells him, his tone gaining some certainty even if he doesn't raise his voice. "You do know me, and he was in your head, so he knew me."

It doesn't hurt that Ben was in his head, once, too. Between the two of them, he imagines it let him do a damn convincing impression, not to mention find the things that would hurt Merritt the most and use them against him. It's a miracle, in that instant, that the frost doesn't return for how angry that thought makes him. The only thing that stops it, stops him is the fact that he doesn't want to disturb too much here, for fear of hurting Merritt more.

[the_hermit]

Merritt opens his eyes again in the face of that new certainty - and finally, they sharpen faintly, as he focuses. As he focuses on Dylan, now, as he feels out the same things that left him so sure it was Dylan before - and then on, finally, beyond Dylan, to the echoes of Jack, of Henley, of Daniel.

And again, he slumps, but there's a release of tension now, the doubt and fear fading as he lets his head tilt into Dylan's. His arms twitch faintly, fighting the currently impossible urge to reach out to him, just barely holding still against the threat of the chains tightening again.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, finally.

[onebehind]

"No," Dylan starts, forehead brushing against his as he shakes his head faintly. "I get why you did it."

He can't promise that he won't read him the Riot Act over this later, when Merritt has recovered, when the kids have, when he has, the terror he felt when he got that text message, when he found Merritt unconscious again cutting through any grudge he still held against him, and likely to cling, but he's not kidding when he says he understands. He would have done the same, if he hadn't been too busy grieving to think yet of going after their attacker. He might still, when the crisis is over and before his fury stills, despite having a first-hand example of how badly that might go.

"We're gonna get you out of here," he continues after a moment, as if that wasn't obvious.

[the_hermit]

"Now," he says, simply, pleading again, and he can't stop himself from shifting faintly, shoulders twitching again as he barely resists the urge to struggle. He still can't breathe right, and while his despair has been replaced by relief, there's still panic lurking at the edges of his mind, and it's still threatening to choke him. He needs out of this. "Please."

[onebehind]

"Yeah," Dylan breathes. On a whim, and as he pulls away, he brushes a brief kiss over Merritt's forehead, platonic and oddly soothing. "Give us a couple minutes."

That said, he rounds the chair again, lock picks reappearing from where ever they disappeared to when he came to stand in front of Merritt. There's another flicker of movement off to his side, where his shadow falls, the dark shifting once again and settling into Jack's as he goes to work. The locks proceed to come off, not one at a time, but in pairs, another popping free on its own when he finishes with the one on the other side, and sooner rather than later, the chains go lax in entirety, dead, empty. They don't reach for him again.

Dylan, on the other hand, does, darting around the edge of the chair as soon as the last lock comes off. He puts a hand immediately to Merritt's shoulder, to catch him if he should pitch forward and as a presence beyond the fact that the room practically buzzes with a sense of him and the kids, the lock picks disappeared again. "We've got you."

[the_hermit]

Merritt takes a breath, tilting his head again into Dylan's touch, the panic fully receding for the first time since Dylan... since Ben left him here - and then keeps breathing while he works on the locks. The shadow catches his eye properly this time as it shifts into Jack's, and he can't help but breathe out a wry, relieved laugh.

He doesn't quite pitch forward when Dylan frees him, but he does slump forward, pulling his injured hand to his chest as he takes deep breaths for the first time in what feels like days. Dylan's hand on his shoulder feels like four of them, and if his hands weren't all but useless, right now, bloodflow just starting to return, he would reach up to cover them with his own. As it is, he just leans into their touch, taking a moment to breathe.

[onebehind]

"We got you," Dylan repeats, his voice, like the rest of him, more than in those three words, the other Horsemen's voices overlapping his, speaking in time. He doesn't seem to find this particularly unsettling or surprising if the fact that his expression never shifts from the worry he's been wearing, among other things, since he walked in.

He does, however, clear his throat almost absently a second later before, in his own voice and just his own, offering, "When you feel like you can move, we'll see about getting out of here entirely." He's not going to rush Merritt, but they're not done here, yet.

[the_hermit]

Merritt huffs out a breath that carries behind it the sound of a sob, tension still draining out of him. "That is the best and weirdest thing I've ever heard," he says, voice choked now for an entirely different reason.

Slowly, he works his uninjured hand, real pain on his face now as the numbness starts to give way to pins and needles, the same happening with his feet as he carefully stretches out his legs, giving a soft noise of discomfort as cramped muscles protest the change in position, no matter how slowly he tries to take it. "It might be a minute," he both warns and agrees.

[onebehind]

"Sorry." He's not.

He is, however, sorry that Merritt's in the state he's in, that they weren't here sooner, that he didn't realize something was up when Merritt went to bed in the first place. (He should have known; he failed, again, as a protector.) While he manages to keep it off his face, however, the thought still likely carries as if he'd said it out loud, and so the apologetic look that follows, finally, belatedly is genuine.

He looks away a moment later. "We got time."

[the_hermit]

"If I can't be sorry, neither can you," Merritt admonishes, though there's no heat to it. "I came after this asshole on my own to keep the rest of you out of it. It wasn't supposed to go south. At least not for me."

Obviously. But the guy really had been more of an asshole than he was expecting, and he couldn't let the threat go unchallenged, and then the guy had cheated, using Dylan against him.

[onebehind]

"I do what I want," Dylan shoots back, trying for a levity he doesn't really feel. He reaches up to rub the corners of his eyes with a breath out, letting it go. A muttered, "So you people keep telling me," follows.

Clearly, the kids are giving him just as much shit, albeit only in a place where he can hear.

[the_hermit]

Merritt snorts anyway, appreciating the attempt, and then arches an eyebrow at him for that second comment.

After a moment, he mirrors the gesture, reaching up to rub at his forehead. His hand still feels odd, like his fingers are too big, but it's stopped hurting, thankfully. (His broken finger is another story, but he assumes that's a problem that will be fixed when he wakes up.) "So I'm guessing I freaked out the whole household," he begins guiltily as he puts that together with everything else he's noticed through this.

[onebehind]

"Or I did."

When he woke up to the text, he'd gone immediately to Merritt's room and tried to pull him out immediately and by himself. It hadn't gone very well. Afterwards, he'd all but literally started kicking down doors, going room to room to wake the rest of their people. That, he figures, was just as much a rude awakening as the news he delivered once he'd had them all out of bed and together.

[the_hermit]

"Thank you," Merritt returns simply, sincerely. The fact remains that he would still be trapped, still be dying a slow, lonely death if not for them.

[onebehind]

Dylan shakes his head.

"I know we've had our issues, lately," he starts, eyes dropping for a second, almost guiltily, before he returns his attention to him. "But you're still a part of this family. You're still a part of my family. That doesn't change just because I needed to be pissed off at someone, and I decided I was gonna go with the first people I saw when I woke up, like some retarded duck."

A meaningful look follows, as Dylan hopes Merritt noticed the use of past tense there. He really can't be pissed off at him, anymore. Not when he almost lost him, not when it was potentially his fault, his quiet upset at dinner the night before the straw to the camel. Not when all of it put the fear of God into him.

[the_hermit]

Merritt does catch that, more tension easing out of his posture. He gestures, and while he doesn't ask for help getting up, it's clear that what he wants.

His legs are still unsteady, but they hold him, and that's enough considering his ultimate plan in getting up is to pull Dylan into the hug Merritt wanted earlier.

[onebehind]

Without so much as a second thought, Dylan steps forward, holding a hand out to Merritt, helping him to his feet. While he pulls his hand out of Merritt's, once he's steady, however, he doesn't stray far. He wants to be there to support him, if his legs decide to betray him at the last second and, more than that, he can sense the hug coming and he wants to return it and fiercely. A sense of warmth, of near-staggering love comes with it, too, and while a piece of it comes from the other Horsemen, in this second, Dylan's passion far outshines their contribution.

"I'm sorry," he tells him, voice tight as he pulls back, one hand still resting lightly against the back of his neck so he can hold his gaze, again. He's sorry their attacker used him to hurt him. He's sorry he hurt him that much, out in the real world, that he believed he'd turn on him.

[the_hermit]

Merritt steps immediately into the hug. He does need a moment to hold himself up, to get his balance again, for the circulation to finish returning properly, but he would be clinging anyway, reaching out magically fully for one of the first times since the real Dylan showed up, catching that to loop the feeling between them, his own love for Dylan, for all of them, enough to take his breath away all over again.

"So am I," he returns just as tightly as he cups the back of Dylan's neck in turn, resting their foreheads together again. He's sorry he had to take Lionel away again, that he had to use Jack to do it. He's sorry he went for Ben, that he walked so willingly into this trap. "We're alright," he assures him after another moment.

[onebehind]

"Yeah," Dylan chokes out, that love overwhelming in the best possible way. He closes his eyes, briefly, not so he doesn't have to look at Merritt but in an attempt to banish the sudden stinging behind them. It doesn't quite work; his eyes are wet when he looks at him again. "Yeah, we are."

A beat, then impulsively, he tacks on, "Brother."

[the_hermit]

Merritt's eyes close against tears of his own - and then Dylan adds that on, and his breath catches hard enough that it makes a noise like something breaking loose, that might actually seem to come from somewhere in the hotel that currently makes up Merritt's mindscape. His attempts to keep the tears back fail entirely, and a few fall down his face as he breathes out an echo. "My brother."

[onebehind]

Dylan pulls him into another hug at that, this one no less solid than the first. When he steps back from this one, however, it's more than just his eyes that are wet, his handle on himself and his ability to get through this without crying, too, apparently just as shattered. He lets out a breath, trembling, and then slowly pulls his hand away from Merritt's neck so he can press the back of his hand into his eyes, wipe the tears away.

He drops his hand again a moment later, and clears his throat. "Anyway, uh." A beat, another small, choked sound as he tries to force the lump in his throat into submission, again, then, "You ready to try getting out of here?"

If worse comes to worst, he and the kids can carry Merritt down and out. If worse comes to worst, he can, period, and would try, would be able to, right now, even without them.

[the_hermit]

Merritt steps into this one as readily as he did the first, clinging back, one hand still at Dylan's neck. He doesn't pull away until Dylan does, and then he, too, wipes at his eyes and then runs his hand down his face as he nods a few more times than is probably actually necessary, as he pulls himself back together.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Let's get the fuck out of here."

[onebehind]

"Alright, c'mmon."

Twisting away from him, Dylan starts towards the door but slowly, ready to double back, catch Merritt, if need be. He's in a hurry to get out of here, but he won't let him fall, won't abandon him. That much is clear.

[the_hermit]

Merritt follows immediately, slowly at first but then gaining steadiness as he goes. By the time Dylan opens the door, he's walking fine, if still cradling his hand to his chest to avoid jarring it on anything.